What We've Been Up To: Marchfield

Monday, June 8, 2009

Marchfield

Last Thursday the kids and I went down to Marchfield Air Museum to look at the planes with some mom friends and their kids. Several times we had driven by at 60+ miles an hour, on our way to the SD Zoo, but never had stopped to appreciate the aircraft up close. Both kids loved getting to sit in the pilot seats, play with the controls, and get right up next to the planes. My favorite part was the discussion the oldest and I had before going into the museum:
Me: "This is pretty neat, huh?"
Her: "Yeah"
Me: "Honey, do you know why these planes are here?"
Her: "Nuh uh"
Me: "Do you know what brave means?"
Her: "Yeah"
Me: "Well, there's these brave men, called soldiers who fly in planes like these and protect us so that we can do things that we like to do and not worry about being safe."
Her: "Oh"
Me: "Do you understand?"
Her: "Yeah"
Me: "Why are the planes here?"
Her: "So that solders can fly them to keep us safe"
Me: "That's right, and these planes are here to remind everyone of all the soldiers who have flown in them to keep us safe. We're pretty lucky to have soldiers to watch out for us, huh?"
Her: "Yep"

The conversation was so serious for her and very touching. She's such a neat kid. Oh yeah, the planes & helicopters were neat too...

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.
-Theodore Roosevelt